CENSORS NEVER PROSPER.

Byline: David Kronke TV critic

Anyone who says, ``I'm not advocating censorship'' almost invariably is - why else would he or she be in a position to have to make such a statement? Censorship remains a pastime popular among the self-appointed moral watchdogs of society, usually under the guise of ``protecting our children.''

The thinking seems to be that, in our culture, adults don't rate any sophisticated works of art or entertainment for their own amusement or edification that kids can't likewise appreciate or sit in on. With those minds at the helm, Jonathan Lipnicki and Barney the Dinosaur would be handing out sloppy hugs as Tony and Paulie on ``The Sopranos.''

Those who seek to squelch free speech should note that history has rarely been on their side - they usually end up looking like fatuous, timorous fools incapable of appreciating ground-breaking works of art. Sometimes, would-be censors don't even need history to indict their behavior: They look like idiots while they're complaining.

The overriding point of ``Culture Shock,'' a four-part, 4 1/2-hour series airing tonight and Feb. 2 on PBS, is that ill-informed social supervision always has been and likely will continue to be with us.

Each of ``Culture Shock's'' four segments examines a work or genre that came under fire: author Mark Twain's ``Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,'' artist Edouard Manet's ``Olympia,'' films made before the Hays Code was enforced, and jazz during the 1920s. Each episode provides a historical sketch of the time and conditions that provoked the work or genre and then examines how it subsequently provoked others.

The segment on Manet's ``Olympia,'' airing tonight, offers the most amusing tale of misplaced rage. Manet's painting was a cagey reaction to the prissy salon culture of the day, in which courtesans traversed freely in proper society and paintings depicted women as demure. Even though many were finding salon-sanctioned art a bore, ``Olympia'' apparently wasn't the tonic needed at the time. Parodying the styles of the time, it presented a coarse, vaguely confrontational prostitute in repose and was, of course, immediately considered vulgar. It is considered a masterpiece today. Rudy Giuliani, who apparently lists 'art critic' among his list of duties as mayor of New York and recently got into a hissing match with a Brooklyn art museum, might want to take note.

The story of the Hays Code, airing next week, is a familiar one: To stave off outside interference, the studios allowed good Catholic boy Joseph Breem to regulate film content for a full two decades. Beyond the no egregious sex/violence/language edicts was a mandate that good always triumph over evil, just like in real life.

This is cited as a rare case in which censorship, albeit of a selmposed nature, had a hand in creating lasting works boasting a measure of subtlety. On the other hand, it's specious to argue that film quality suffered significantly because of the lifting of the Code - there were plenty of lousy clean-cut movies, too. And 1999 seemed to be a watershed year for movies, mainly because the best films pushed boundaries in one fashion or other.

This installment includes the astonishing fact that a 1915 Supreme Court ruling decreed that movies were objects of commerce, not speech, and therefore not protected by the First Amendment; it took 37 years for the ruling to be overturned. (I wonder what they'd rule today.) Some of the footage of pre-Code movies is pretty entertaining and revealing.

Attacks on jazz, the subject of the final episode, were fairly clear-cut examples of racism - one newspaper headline of the time declared the music ''harkens back to the African jungle,'' while another fretted that it ``put the 'sin' in syncopation.'' Simply put, it was thought that jazz made people - particularly impressionable young women - want to have sex.

Jazz wasn't accepted until whites began enjoying the music - not performing it, mind you; white musicians' early stabs at jazz steamrolled the soul and swing clean out of the music - that it garnered some respectability. Even then, whites mingling and dancing with blacks was, to some minds, scandalous. Eventually, of course, the music became acknowledged as an art form, and that which was born in the bordellos of New Orleans is now equally at home at Lincoln Center.

Racism also figures in tonight's first segment, on ``Huckleberry Finn.'' It's the most troubling and complicated of the series, charting the travails the acclaimed novel has experienced over the years, routinely getting banned for its racial content (originally, the book was dismissed as simply crude and anti-literate). It's always a tragedy when people, in ignorance, reject their champion, and it's a grievous fact of life that there are individuals who refuse to see Twain's point. There are those who persist to this day in finding the book racist when it is precisely the opposite (the NAACP condemned it in the '50s).

On the other hand, those who aren't African-American can't possibly understand the hurt one might feel when Twain, who was using the word not that differently than a rapper might today, drops the n-bomb, which Huck does copiously throughout the book. A clumsy teacher who can't get his or her students to understand the subtlety of Twain's work, mixed with students raised in racially confused households, could lead to disaster.

But a teacher who can communicate the book's themes and humor can get his or her students to really mull over important issues - the episode concludes with high school students of various ethnicities discussing the book with an insight that has eluded some adults for more than a century.

In Manet's case, the man died before his efforts were finally acknowledged as works of genius. These sagas are told authoritatively and stirringly. Colorful, passionate interviewees such as literary critic David Bradley, art historian Linda Nochlin and music critic Michael Eric Dyson enliven and contextualize the material. They patiently explain why meddling and forcing others to get in lockstep with one's own mores is always an unsatisfactory solution compared to tolerance and an open mind. Even, I suppose, when applied to that infernal Britney Spears racket my stepdaughters blare through the house.

THE FACTS

--The show: ``Culture Shock.''

--What: Four-part documentary exploring the history of censorship and the arts.

--Who: Narrated by Courtney B. Vance, John Lithgow, Ellen Barkin and Dion Graham.

--Where: PBS (KCET).

--When: 9 tonight and Feb. 2.

--Our rating: three stars

CAPTION(S):

3 photos, box

Photo: (1) The 1932 film ``Scarface,'' with Osgood Perkins, left, Karen Morley and Paul Muni, was considered in its day the most violent gangster movie ever made. It is included in the ``Hollywood Censored'' episode of the PBS series.

(2) Sultry actress Jean Harlow, in a 1931 promotional portrait, was viewed as being too hot for film.

(3) As the popularity of jazz grew, so did campaigns to censor ``the devil's music.'' The struggles of Mamie Smith's Jazz Hounds and other groups are explored in ``The Devil's Music: 1920s Jazz.''

Box: THE FACTS (see text)